Google has officially announced the shutdown of its collaborative whiteboarding service Jamboard. According to the Workspace Updates blog post they put out today, this will finalize by the end of next year, 2024. The company states it’s integrating competitors like FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro across Workspace as solutions so you can keep whiteboarding with others.
In fact, some of these have already been available, but it’s interesting to see Google recede in its desire to be a provider in this space and offload you to third parties. This is not uncommon for the AI giant, who has done this with Stadia, Google Domains and more in recent memory.
In addition to the wind down, Google says it will provide retention and migration paths for all of your Jamboards so you don’t lose anything until you decide to move on to something else. Given the direct quote below from their blog post, it sounds like no one wanted to use Jamboard compared to other tools, but you’ll have to let me know in the comments if you used it with your team or not!
We’ve heard from our customers that whiteboarding tools like FigJam by Figma, Lucidspark by Lucid Software, and the visual workspace Miro help their teams work better together — specifically, the advanced features they offer such as infinite canvas, use case templates, voting, and more. Based on this feedback, we’ve decided to leverage our partner ecosystem for whiteboarding in Workspace and focus our efforts on core content collaboration across Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Google Workspace Updates
Interestingly, to help you transition, FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro are all working with Google to make integrations for the Board 65 and Desk 27 by Avocor who both offer devices similar to the Jamboard hardware that Google priced at $5,000.
Here’s the timeline for the Jamboard shutdown:
- All Jamboard license subscriptions (including education) – September 30, 2024. Anyone with a year subscription renewal will get to renew their sub through that date at a prorated cost
- Jamboard backup can be completed through September 30, 2024, after which your data will be deleted from Google’s servers
- The 55-inch Jamboard device will reach “end of life” (its Auto Update Expiration date) and won’t get security or feature updates after October 1, 2024
- The Jamboard app and web app will be shuttered on December 31, 2024, so download your Jam files now!
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